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Discuss how growth in the city limits of Triangle cities relates to the other large state cities


Atlside

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I don't know of any city in NC that is focused on quality over quantity, well, maybe with the exception of Asheville. That is just not the American way. Aggressive annexation is exactly how Charlotte got to be the 18th largest city in the country. Both Raleigh and Charlotte have grown the wrong way, but both seem to be putting forth an effort to try to correct that. We should just be happy that, for now, we have fairly nice cities to live in. They may not be the most dense, or have the most stunning architecture, but our stars are still rising.

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Coincidentally the News & Observer has run articles in the last several days about the emerging awareness of sharp social and political differences between Raleigh and the rest of Wake County, which has become dominated by people who moved into NC from other states over the last 15 years. To a lesser degree, there are similar differences between pre-1990 Raleigh and post-1990 Raleigh.

It's an increasingly ugly time. Just in the last two weeks, the Mayor of Holly Springs denounced the Mayor of Raleigh as someone who's stuck in the past and out of touch with the new political reality in the county. Meanwhile the Mayor of Raleigh criticizes recent arrivals who don't share Raleigh's traditional values -- implicitly criticizing some of his own voter base -- and proposes a lawsuit to preserve the pre-2009 WCPSS. On the other hand, the WCPSS board decides to relocate the WCPSS headquarters from Raleigh to Cary.

There was some polarization in the 1990s with Fetzer/Coble on one side and progressives on the other, but nothing like this. I don't believe the fundamental demographics will change much going forward. Besides development patterns, Raleigh/Wake differ from Charlotte/Mecklenburg in that 44% of Wake lives in Raleigh but 78% of Mecklenburg lives in Charlotte.

What now? Perhaps a progressive leader will emerge in Raleigh who can rebuild a degree of county-wide consensus, or at least detante. Perhaps the progressives will go to war politically and keep the city progressive even as the county chooses otherwise. But in that event, don't count on the county's cooperation on projects like the Convention Center, into which the county put a lot of money.

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You're both debating the two sides of the same coin: growth. RAL seems to be focused on quantity v. ctl's focus on quality. RAL, at least from my perspective, seems to be espousing an "aggressive annexation" policy so that raleigh proper can gain more residents and become the 44th, or 43rd, or 42nd biggest city. Ctl, on the other hand, seems to be arguing that excessive annexation of outlying suburbs, and its politically conservative voters, will actually harm Raleigh proper's long-term plans for sustainable development.

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